Okay folks it’s time to see how your workplace stacks up against these companies’ workplace amenities. Check off all that apply.
Complimentary massages, dry cleaning, haircuts, onsite medical care, and unlimited free meals. That would be at the Googleplex in Mountain View, California. Somehow the toasters choice free coffee doesn’t really cut it any more does it? Now if only you knew how to do computer programming or invent video games you would be all set.
Other examples include annual whitewater rafting trips at E-bay, free day care and doggy care at Genetech, surfing during working hours when the surf is up at Quicksilver Software or being able to play ping pong at the Huffington Post when things a re a little slow. Don’t have any of these? Too bad. You just might be in the wrong career.
If you are thinking about changing jobs then look no further than Dealer.com, a car dealership support company. Their 360 employees, according to AOL have access to their own fitness center, subsidized organic food cafe that delivers food to your desk or is available for take-out, season pass discounts for snowboarding, chair massages, and indoor tennis court. And the company is soon adding a yoga studio with retractable roof, a solarium and rooftop vegetable garden, juice bar and two saunas.
The list of possible and available perks being provided by some companies is endless. It you want to be entertained then you can choose from custom shuffle board, pool table, foosball, ping pong, 9-hole par 3 golf course, basketball court, many pinball machines, and arcade games at one company. If you’re tired you can jump into the nap pod and if you’re really bored you can even bring your laundry and do it at work at another business.
So, what is up with all this free stuff? Part of it is clearly an attempt by employers to attract and retain certain groups of employees who are probably in demand across industries and even continents. But part of it is also to create a culture at work where employees are tangibly valued in addition to their monetary compensation. And for the companies noted above it makes sense for their bottom line and long term growth. I just my employers had felt the same way. I could have developed a wicked backhand in ping pong.
This post first appeared on my blog at www.jobs.ca
Mike Martin is a freelance writer and the author of The Walker on the Cape, a Sgt. Windflower mystery. www.walkeronthecape.com
Earlier this year the Human Resource Professionals Association (HRPA) and the accounting firm Deliotte released a report on the future of work in Canada entitled Canada Works 2025. This report looked at the key economic, social, technological, environmental and demographic trends shaping the Canadian workplace and perhaps what is even more interesting developed three scenarios of what the Canadian economy and society could look like in 2025.
In the view of the report’s authors the year 2025 could bring what they call “the lost decade”, a period of positive but unsustainable prosperity. Or what we all hope for is an ushering in of an era in which Canada and Canadian workers transform our economy into a northern tiger. Bill Greenhalgh, CEO, Human Resources Professionals Association explained the tiger concept like this: “As the northern tiger, Canada enjoys a strong and robust economy where workplace flexibility is the norm and training and education providers are in synch with the needs of business.”
The big question is how do we get there? And like all possible views of the future that depends on the decisions we make today. If we make the right combination of decisions we end up with a vibrant and dynamic economy and workforce. If not we get one of the first two options. In the words of Jeff Moir from Deliotte “The best way to predict the future is to invent it.”
And so we build this future by encouraging government and business to work in tandem and identify and implement the common strategies that we need, as well as the strategies we have to put in to hedge against undesirable outcomes. And those strategies must focus on:
Modernizing Education so that the next generation of workers has the tools, technology and teachers they need to succeed.
Reforming Immigration to bring in workers that we need and helping immigrants to succeed
Improving Employment Flexibility by addressing skills gaps and shortages and building workplaces that support workers and families
Investing in Industry Excellence to create new Canadian super companies and services that can be the best in Canada and around the world.
Ensuring that Talent has Access to Opportunities and companies have access to talent across the country by reducing barriers and regulations.
HRPA and Deliotte may not have come up with all of the answers to the challenges facing the Canadian employment landscape but they seem to have some strong suggestions about how to get to the best possible outcome. Let’s hope that the decision makers are listening.
This post first appeared on my blog at www.jobs.ca
Mike Martin is a freelance writer and the author of The Walker on the Cape, a Sgt. Windflower mystery.
Fear
What’s holding you back?
We are all afraid of something. Snakes, basements, elevators, heights or spiders. Some people are so scared of things that they can’t go out of their house or apartment. Fear and dying and fear of dying are the common threads that link all humans together. But what is fear really?
Fear is a feeling that something bad might happen to us if something else happens, like a snake bites us or we get trapped in the elevator. But fear is also the feeling that we might lose something we value or not get something that we really want. The good news about fear is that it is almost always about the future. The bad news about fear is that it holds us back from acting in the present.
Some one once said that FEAR stands for Feeling Emotional As if it were Real. We feel that something bad will happen so we freeze and sometimes literally can’t take that next step. Once we discover that the fear is not real, like the monster in the closet, we can then take action.
To get over, around or through a fear we have to face it. It is a real feeling, but it is not real. Then despite the feeling we have to take that first step towards the fear. It may be terrifying but once you take that step, touch the snake, you will never be afraid of that thing again.
Fear. What’s holding you back?
Mike Martin is the author of The Walker on the Cape, a Sgt. Windflower mystery.
One of the “big” things of the 60′s and 70′s was to learn to expand your mind using a variety of tools and techniques, most of which I vaguely recall as involving a chemical intervention. Not that I would know anything about that. You don’t hear much talk about that concept these days but I still think it’s a good idea.
The creativity genius Edward de Bono wrote a book called “The Mechanism of Mind,” which offered suggestions to improve anyone’s creative thinking. Most of his advice is very practical and simple. But not necessarily easy. That’s because we have been trained to think in a certain way and really don’t know any other. de Bono starts by suggesting that we look at a problem in different ways if we want to be creative.
To do that he suggests a number of techniques:
Expand Your Thinking, Randomly: Try opening a book at random, or pointing to a word by random. Go for a walk and let the objects you see influence your thinking. Whatever the input is, it has to be random and from outside your mind.
Expand Your Idea Quota: Just because you have thought up a perfectly good solution to your problem, don’t stop. You may be able to come up with an even better solution. One way to practice this is to set a goal of finding three solutions and picking the best.
Expand Your Attention: Try and bring your attention to different parts of the problem: If you bring one aspect of a problem into the foreground of your thoughts for a while it will sometimes lead you to a full solution of the problem.
Expand Your Thinking, in Reverse: Try thinking of the opposite situation or problem to what you might be facing. It might be a reversal in size, time, direction or meaning. Asking a question about a problem in the opposite way may in fact lead to some other solution that one might not have thought of if one hadn’t asked the question.
As I said, simple, but not easy. But try expanding your mind. It just might work. After all, what’s the alternative?
Mike Martin is the author of The Walker on the Cape, a Sgt. Windflower mystery.
A column on Salon.com that was forwarded to me by a friend recently got me to thinking about my relationship with the evil empire of Amazon. The post by author and successful e-book writer Art Edwards reveals many of the same doubts that most of us ‘old school’ writers feel about the new world of electronic books and publishing.
http://www.salon.com/2012/11/18/letting_go_of_my_kindle_guilt/
My own experience is that I am certainly grateful for the opening that self-publication has provided to me and my work. I may have been able to get The Walker on the Cape published through a traditional publisher but I didn’t want to wait three years to do it. And I have had the opportunity to really understand the publishing/marketing business along the way. I have a lot of sympathies for publishers, especially small ones. They cannot afford to take too many chances nor make even one mistake.
I do however remain a skeptic when it comes to the idea that we will all become e-readers in the not too distant future and that the end of the printed book is nigh. Yes there will be a lot more books available in electronic versions but I think that we will continue to have a printed book universe, smaller but maybe more intense, as we move forward.
As for me even though I now have two books in e-print and available on the devil spawn, Amazon, I do not own an e-reader and I have no plans to get one, even to review my own books. I do not like them, any of them, and still want to curl up with a printed version of my favourite books. Can you even curl up with a Kindle?
Thoughts anyone?
Mike Martin is the author of The Walker on the Cape, a Sgt. Windflower mystery.
A friend recently wrote to me about his 14 year old daughter who wanted to be a writer. He asked if I had any advice or suggestions to offer her. Here’s what I sent back.
I have been a writer all of my life. Sometimes it was little scraps of a story on the back of my exercise book. Other times it was a little bit of poetry that described the highs (and mostly lows) of being a teenager. I knew from a young age that I would like to be a writer but didn’t have a clue how to do it. Most of the time these pieces of writing were locked away, burnt, or otherwise held in secret. I was terrified that someone would find them and gulp… read them.
So I kept my writing hidden for a long time, letting out a little tiny bit here and there, to people that I loved and/or trusted. To my amazement almost everybody said they were pretty good. That felt good but it still took me many years to reach out past those trusted few people to share my stuff with the world.
As I began working I kept both writing and finding jobs where I could write as least part of the time. This meant writing business correspondence, policy papers, items for the company newsletter, editorials, even speeches. I came to enjoy these parts of my jobs much more than anything else and I knew that I was supposed to be writing more. So I did.
I fell in love and wrote tons of love poetry. Sappy, heartfelt, drippy, but quite lovely poetry. I shared it with the woman I loved and she was very, very happy with me. I also started writing short stories about Christmas growing up and shared them with my family. They were surprised but also happy with me.
Then one day I realized that I had become a writer, just by writing and sharing and I decided to take a chance with the rest of the world. I sent off a little piece to a magazine and they accepted it and paid me $25.00. Amazing. Then I send out a hundred more pieces and nobody bought, not one. But I kept going and sold piece # 101. I haven’t stopped since. To date I have published thousands of articles and blog posts in magazines, newspapers, and on-line publications in Canada, the United States and New Zealand. I have published two books and I have my third being edited for publication next year.
What a thrill to go into my local Chapters and see my book on the shelves. Or go online and see it on Amazon or Barnes and Noble or Books a Million… whatever that is.
So you wanna be a writer? You already be one. Just say it out loud. I am a writer.
You wanna write a book? Look at my blog post here:
http://walkeronthecape.com/2012/11/15/getting-it-out-of-your-head-and-into-a-book/
Write, a lot. Every day. Share, a lot. Especially with people in the business. They will tell you if they like it or if they think it’s any good. But you will learn to know what is good and what isn’t yourself. You probably already do. Don’t be discouraged. Your work will be rejected. Hundreds of times. Thousands of times if you are lucky enough to write that much and live that long. Keep going and be the best writer you can be.
Send me a copy of your first book.
Mike Martin is the author of The Walker on the Cape, a Sgt. Windflower mystery.
